Send Browser Push Notifications for Free

Chrome Notifications 101

What are Chrome Push Notifications?

Chrome Push Notifications are clickable messages that you’re relayed from a website, receiving them on your desktop or mobile device even if the website is not necessarily open on your chrome browser. A subset of browser push notifications, a marketing channel quickly soaring in popularity, chrome push notifications represent these messages that are received using the chrome browser, which supports push notifications for both desktop and mobile.

Now, Websites can send push notifications to all users (Vizury supports from Chrome50+) without the need to develop an app and have it installed on the device. These notifications are similar to mobile App Push Notifications (notifications sent by a mobile app that land in your notification tray) except that Chrome push notifications work on websites instead of apps and can be accessed on all devices (desktop, mobile, tablet, etc).

Notifications have been the most popular channel for engaging and converting visitors/users into customer, and this new update is yet another way for websites to acquire and retain customers.

It will be quite useful to compare Chrome push notifications with other popular communication or marketing channels.

Chrome, Firefox and Safari are the leading players in the market, accounting for 82% of the market. Here’s a look at how they compare when it comes to serving browser push notifications.

Channel

Web push notifications

App Push notifications

Email

Social media

Format

Text (50+120 Char), Images, Url

Text, Images, Carousel

Text + Images +Video + CTA

Text + Images +Video + CTA

Best Practice

Immediate delivery with CTA

Immediate delivery with CTA

Weekly/Monthly updates (User may miss it)

Daily Updates (users may miss it)

Market Size

Any website visitor who has subscribed to your push notifications

Anyone who has installed your app and have not unsubscribed from notifications

Specific set of people who shared their personal info with you

Anyone who has a social account

Market size for Chrome notifications

August 2016 Browser Market Share:

As Chrome, Firefox and Safari are winning the bait in the market with ~82%, it becomes a great deal to see how websites will use it over a period of time.

August 2015 Browser Market Share:

Mobile Web vs. Mobile App: Why Chrome push notifications matter

Quixey, a mobile app search company, revealed that 32.6% of US mobile device users prefer to use both mobile apps and browsers at different times. Here’s a more precise split up – 19.6% of the audience revealed a preference for mobile browsers, while 23.1% admitted that they favored mobile apps. A further 24.7% din’t have a preference per se.

Pros of mobile browsers according to the audience –
Nearly 74.8% of the former category of users (who picked mobile browsers) based their choice on the fact that mobile browsers provide access to all the content they’re looking for, in one place. Additionally, 23.2% pointed out the lack of a need to install anything new on their device as a chief reason.

Pros of mobile apps –

28.3% of the users who picked mobile apps mentioned a better user experience. Additionally, respondents liked that apps offer access to more features and capabilities and that they have push notifications and alerts. What did these users dislike about mobile apps though? The fact that these apps take up storage space on their phone and don’t provide enough access to everything they need.

Why use website notifications when the mobile web market is weak? Think again!

Let’s look at this stat from Source: Morgan Stanley rendering of comScore data

The research note is designed to combat the perception that the mobile web is anemic or in decline (and by extension, Google). It’s not. As the data shows, mobile browser usage is growing faster than apps and delivering larger audiences for most publishers.

Morgan Stanley points out that only 12 of the top 50 mobile properties have more traffic coming from apps than the browser. The discussion argues for the primacy of the mobile browser for most publishers, brands and marketers.

How do Chrome notifications work?

They are two main requirements for these notifications to work.

1.HTTPS – Website notifications can only be implemented on HTTPS enabled domains to prevent man-in-the-middle attacks. But with a little work-around HTTP websites too can implement web push functionality.

2. Service Workers, push and notifications APIs should be supported by the google chrome browser else the service won’t work!
This entire workflow can also be understood with this simple explanation by Pete LePage during Google I/O 2016. He explained the entire process in three steps with three major components (Browser – Endpoint – Server)

Subscribing a user

Sending a message

Receiving a message

How ecommerce marketers are using Chrome notifications?

If you run a business online, you can leverage the power of web push (or, google chrome browser push notifications) and grow your business. While web push gives you an edge and enables you to talk in a better way, it also provides you with an immense number of benefits to help you drive more revenues from your business. Check out several benefits that web push offers.

Go mobile but without an app:

Mobile apps have been enjoying a potential free channel i.e. push notification. However, does this mean you have to wait till your app is finally out? After all, an app pretty much guarantees all your consumers under one roof ready and waiting for some timely push notifications to swing their way.

But what if you have a website (desktop/mobile) already up and running while you’re still building your app? I mean, it rarely happens that someone puts an app out without already having a website up and functioning.

Browser push notification saves you the efforts & cash that you’d otherwise need to invest in building an app & more importantly get it installed. You can enjoy all the benefits of mobile push notifications from your website.

Drive more sales:

This is an ultimate goal for any business. You have lost 68.81% of your sales in 2015 (This value is an average calculated based on these 34 different studies containing statistics on e-commerce shopping cart abandonment.) Source: http://baymard.com/lists/cart-abandonment-rate

Browser push notification helps curb cart abandonment rate by pushing instant deals & notifications to users who left unordered items in the cart, offering a way better alternative to SMS or email notifications

There are several other use cases for e-commerce businesses like:

a. Product category drop-off (user dropped off from mobile category)

b. Product drop-off (user dropped-off from blue t-shirt page)

c. Comparison page (user dropped off after comparing two products)

d. Cart abandonment

f. Drop-off after liking a product

Re-engage your users like never before:

As far as browser push is concerned, the genius lies in the simplicity for both the marketer and the user. You don’t need a lot of user details to start sending notifications and can keep re-engaging them even when they leave your website without collecting any personal information. Similarly, all it takes for the user to start receiving these notifications is a simple click of the opt-in button on their browser. They don’t need to provide tones of information and are also spared the grief of receiving irrelevant emails and messages a dime a dozen.

You can touch base with your inactive users by notifying them with personalized notifications. Send notifications with deals, or offer updates basis their interest & on-site behaviour. Build relationships & improve your earnings. For example- Re-engage with the users who have not visited your website in the past week. Share unique coupon codes, product details or visited categories to get them back!

Timely updates

Business is all about winning the moments that matter. In this case it is “Right Person, Right Message, Right Time, Every Time” (RRRE) . Reaching out to your audience with a channel that serves the core theory of RRRE is an ultimate goal of any marketer and customer aquisition manager.

Let’s consider that you need to send a time-limited deal or announce a sale. You can use web push notifications and instantly reach your users on their desktop, mobile or tablet with push notifications, even when they are not on your website.

Keep your customers informed

Want to inform your users about the product delivery and asking for feedback. Chrome push notifications make it an easy process. This entire process is hustle free and instant.
Eg. May be informing about the product delivery status.

Email doesn’t work anymore:

We collected some data from the mail chimp webarchive for eCommerce email benchmarks. Data reveals how open rates have decreased from 22.2% to 16.73% in last 4 years, while click rates have also gone down by 0.47%. People are more likely to unsubscribe from emails because of email abuse and a great deal of promotional/junk/redundant mail.

Browser push notifications shows you a way (with statistics) to acquire new customers with zero ad spends.

Date, Year

Industry

Open

Click

Soft Bounce

Hard Bounce

Abuse

Unsub

Source

September, 2016

E-commerce

16.73%

2.43%

0.31%

0.25%

0.02%

0.23%

http://bit.ly/2dlyaKG

September, 2015

eCommerce

16.87%

2.60%

0.34%

0.27%

0.03%

0.21%

http://bit.ly/2dvvFZl

September, 2014

eCommerce

17.35%

3.00%

0.48%

0.43%

0.04%

0.20%

http://bit.ly/2cZzRSz

September, 2013

eCommerce

22.20%

2.90%

0.30%

0.20%

0.03%

0.12%

http://bit.ly/2cvO17L

How effective are Chrome push notifications as a customer acquisition channel?

Many times marketers run experiments using a new channel and still clueless about the response tthat he will get. Although there is no secret sauce that comes with chrome push notifications but your creativity can make it work better than any other channel (eg. email, social media or TV ads).

Browser push notifications shows you a way (with statistics) to aquire new customers with zero ad spends.